“Flood, Fast, Focus” Integrated Vocabulary

Transcription

IRA
–SSENTIALS
What’s New in Literacy Teaching?
“FLOOD, FAST, FOCUS”:
Integrated Vocabulary Instruction
in the Classroom
CAMILLE L.Z. BLACHOWICZ
JAMES F. BAUMANN
PATRICK C. MANYAK
MICHAEL F. GRAVES
May 2013 | DOI:10.1598/e-ssentials.8027 | © 2013 International Reading Association
I know a lot of bits and pieces about vocabulary, but I can’t
seem to put it all together.
Vocabulary is really important, I know, but I just can’t figure
how to get it integrated into my curriculum. I keep falling
back on workbooks.
—Exit slip comments after a professional development
meeting
J
osie, a fifth-grade teacher, was preparing to
teach a new social studies unit on China. She
took a weekend to read through the textbook,
the trade books, anthology selections, magazines,
and the electronic and other media that her district
curriculum guide provided for instruction along with
a few sources she had chosen. She kept a running
total of all the vocabulary she thought might be
difficult for her students; by Sunday night, she had
183 words for a 3-week unit, no instructional plan,
and a throbbing headache!
Sound familiar? If so, join the club and realize
that you are not alone. In the last decade, there has
been a renewed interest in vocabulary instruction
in the school curriculum. Vocabulary was, and is, a
“hot” topic in education (Cassidy & Grote-Garcia,
2012), and plays a large part in the movement toward
Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices
[NGA Center] & Council of Chief State School
Officers [CCSSO], 2010) under consideration in a
majority of the United States.
Yet comments and scenarios like the ones at the
start of this article, expressing lack of confidence
and clarity about vocabulary instruction, reflect
what we often heard or received on exit slips when
working with teachers in professional development
and in our classes. Surveys of classroom teachers
and reading specialists to find out what they needed
to apply vocabulary research and best practices in
their own classrooms (Berne & Blachowicz, 2009;
Blachowicz, Fisher, Ogle, & Watts-Taffe, 2006)
showed their number one question is How can we
develop a consistent, comprehensive research-based
approach to vocabulary instruction in my classroom,
building, or district? followed by What are the best
strategies or activities for integrating vocabulary into
my curriculum? and What words should I choose for
instructional focus?
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These are the issues we will try to address in this
article.
Some “Basics”
Before we jump right into instruction, there are
three important research-grounded assumptions
about vocabulary that underpin effective vocabulary
instruction. First, word learning is incremental:
Learning a word is not like an on–off switch but like
a dimmer switch that keeps strengthening what we
know (Baker, Simmons, & Kame’enui, 1995). Think
about little kids who first learn cat and then proceed
to call the dog cat, the bird cat, and so forth, until they
realize that cat refers to furry, whiskered, meowing
animals only...and until they go to the zoo and see the
cats that roar and learn more about the word and what
it can apply to. Thus, many meaningful exposures
build the depth and breadth of our word knowledge.
Second, students learn more words than we
can teach them, roughly 3,000–4,000 a year
from kindergarten through 12th grade (D’Anna,
Zechmeister, & Hall, 1991; Nagy & Herman, 1987).
These numbers suggest that learning happens
incidentally from all kinds of contexts: Books
and other written media (Cunningham, 2005),
conversation around school tasks (Stahl & Vancil,
1986), and conversations at home, in the park, or on
the playing fields with friends (Hart & Risley, 1995;
Snow, 1991), along with television, music, social
media, and movies all build vocabulary.
These first two assumptions suggest that we need
a FLOOD of words to surround our students. Not
everything needs to be formally taught or assessed,
but we need to provide rich language environments
“FLOOD, FAST, FOCUS” | May 2013 | DOI:10.1598/e-ssentials.8027 | © 2013 International Reading Association
in our schools and classrooms—well stocked
with books, word games, puzzles, wordfocused puzzle and riddle books, references,
electronic tools—and TIME to use these
things, to read widely and to write frequently.
There also needs to be at least three levels of
talk and writing going on:
1. Conversational—Where students learn the
“rules” of friendly talk and note writing
2. P
roblem solving—Language students use
when working in groups on an academic
task
3. P
resentational—When students speak or
write to an audience to present their ideas
Figure 2
Frayer model definition frame
Definition (from text)
a government by the people exercised
either through direct action or through
elected representatives
Definition ( in your own words)
Characteristics
people set up their own
government
leaders elected
the majority decides
has a written constitution
has free and open elections
people are active in their own
government
a form of government where people in a
country vote and elect representatives to
govern their country
Key Term: Democracy
Third, it’s clear that good instruction
can affect vocabulary learning significantly
and good instruction can be either FAST or
Examples
Nonexamples
FOCUSED. FAST instruction can be all that
is needed when a concept is well established
United States
China
and a new word needs to be attached to it. For
Canada
North Korea
example, most students know the word hat.
France
Tibet
Now that all the cool music dudes are wearing
Brazil
porkpie hats, porkpie is not that hard a word
Argentina
to teach.
India
Present a photo such as that in Figure 1
showing Buster Keaton wearing this hat with
a flat brim and a cylindrical top, and the
word is well introduced. Students will note
that Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and
others are sighted wearing porkpies in every
or definition frames (See Figure 2) used in discussion
issue of People magazine. Concrete nouns like this
and analysis.
are often easy to teach with simple explanations or
So our mantra for thinking about one way we
visuals.
plan our vocabulary teaching is “FLOOD, FAST, and
Other words are
Figure 1
FOCUS” as we build a repertoire of instructional
more
difficult
to
teach
Porkpie hat
strategies.
and call for FOCUSED
instruction. Democracy is
The MCVIP Curriculum Model
an abstract concept that
At the same time interest in vocabulary instruction
has many features, which
was experiencing a renewal, the report of the National
also may differ slightly
Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health
from country to country.
and Human Development, 2000) highlighted the fact
This is a topic more
that there was a dearth of instructional research on
readily developed within
exemplary vocabulary instruction in real classrooms
a unit with reading,
discussion, and exercises
and the United States Office of Education began
such as feature analyses
funding projects to address this issue.
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The Multifaceted Comprehensive Vocabulary
Instruction Program (MCVIP) was born and was
stimulated by conversations around Michael Graves’s
(2006; Graves & Silverman, 2010) four-component
curriculum model for integrating vocabulary into the
curriculum, which reflected the same research base
as much of our work (Baumann, Ware, & Edwards,
2007; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2010; Manyak, 2007).
This research base gives teachers clues to the
important dimensions of an effective elementary
vocabulary program, which integrates vocabulary
into the overall curriculum rather than considering it
a free-standing element (See Figure 3). In this model,
the teacher does the following:
• Provides and engages students in rich and varied
language activities
• Teaches individual general academic and domainfocused vocabulary
• Develops students’ independent word learning
strategies
• Stimulates and develops word consciousness
Fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in three states
participated in the formative development of the
MCVIP model, which produced both significant
standardized and performance gains on vocabulary
measures for their students (Baumann, Blachowicz,
Manyak, Graves, & Olejnik, 2009). This helped us
develop models of instruction that ensured that the
four components of good vocabulary instruction
could be integrated into the school curriculum.
Teachers needed to choose words for student learning
and exposure well and decide how best to teach
them. Along the way, they also developed and shared
their own insights about integrated comprehensive
instruction that enriched the model.
Choosing Words to Teach
Integrated vocabulary instruction starts by choosing
vocabulary words that are central to the big ideas of
your curriculum: These are words that are essential to
your students’ understanding of the topic under study.
They may be frequent, general academic and domainfocused words, and they can include generative words,
words with frequent roots and affixes that generate a
host of related terms. The process for choice needs to
be curriculum focused and teacher directed, ideally by
teams who share the same goals (Blachowicz, Fisher,
Ogle, & Watts-Taffe, 2013). Baumann and Graves (2010)
provided an example for selecting math vocabulary:
First, identify the domain-specific words at an appropriate
level (e.g., a middle school math teacher would work
from Marzano and Pickering’s Level 3 math list, which
correspond[s] to grades 6–8). Second, identify words
deemed to be important for instruction (e.g., words from
Figure 3
the Level 3 math list that appear in the adopted math
MCVIP components of effective vocabulary instruction
textbook, curriculum, or state standards). Third, select
words for instruction by asking[,] “Is this term critically
important to the mathematics content I will be teaching
this year?” ... Fourth, organize the selected words
according to how they occur in your curriculum. (p. 8)
The planning sheet in Figure 4 is used by
many of our MCVIP teachers to help them
organize their word choice and instructional
thinking. Josie thought about all these
guidelines and whittled down her list to those
shown in Figure 5. She added the general
academic words paraphrase, rephrase, and
visual image, which she would use in her
instruction and in her assignments to make
sure that her students would understand what
was being asked of them as well as to build
their general academic vocabulary.
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This was still too long a list for a
3-week unit, so she marked with an
asterisk FOCUS vocabulary that she
wanted all students to understand
in text and be able to use in their
speech and writing about the topic.
These words were essential to
students’ comprehension of the unit
and its big ideas about aspects of
trade and government in Ancient
China and the ways in which the
emperor controlled the populace.
In planning for her teaching,
Josie knew some of these words
would be easy to teach (FAST words)
because they were established
concepts that have easy synonyms
or explanations with examples or
analogies:
Figure 4
Vocabulary instruction planning grid
CHOOSING WORDS AND PLANNING INSTRUCTION-FAST, FLOOD, FOCUS
Unit Name______________________________ Topic/Big Idea__________________
ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING
NICE TO KNOW
STUDENT
STRATEGY words:
words students will
figure out using the
context or with other
strategies; teacher
scaffolding as needed
FAST words: key
vocabulary that the
teacher teaches using
fast synonym, TIW
model or other brief
instruction
(Can be introductory phase of
FOCUS instruction)
FOCUS words: key
vocabulary for which
teacher uses a
"AEIOU" "all the way
through" method with
vocabulary frame to
support students
FLOOD words:
additional vocabulary
for word wall, play,
building relational
sets
• Ancestor—a member of your
family who lives long ago
(Most FLOOD words are in this
category)
• Fomenting—causing trouble
•F
ractious—becomes angry very
easily
Figure 5
Words relevant to Josie’s China unit
alignment
ambassador*
ancestor*
ancient
anodyne
authoritarian*
bastion
bilateral
caravans*
civil service
classes
commerce*
Confucius*
conspicuously
construction (construct [ed, s, ing],
destructive)
cordoned
deployed*
dynasty*
emperor (empire)*
even-keel
export (importer [ed, s, ing], port,
transport, porter, portable)*
fared
fomenting
fractious*
frivolous
Great Wall*
hamstrung
import (importer [ed, s, ing], port,
transport, porter, portable)*
intractable*
invaders (invade [d, s, ing], invasion)
jockeying
kerfuffle
landlords
larded
legalism (legal)
lithe
measures
onus
paraphrase*
philosopher (philosophy)*
precedent*
pretext*
profits/profitable*
provinces*
rebellion*
rephrase*
ruler*
sanction*
shogun
Silk Road*
standardization/standard
stilted
succession
tandem
trade (trader)*
trade route*
turbulence
visual image*
weights (weigh [ed, s, ing], weight)*
Note. * indicates FOCUS words.
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• I ntractable—will not give in or change his or her mind
•P
recedent—something that happened before that
you can use for a new decision: “Because my brother
got to go to Great America when he was 11, I should
get to go. That was a precedent in our family.”
The online Longman Learners Dictionary site helped
her check for easy, “kid friendly” definitions.
Then there would be FOCUS words that were
complex and required more focused instruction:
authoritarian, empire, emperor, turbulence, dynasty,
succession, and others would be taught with “all the
way through” methods (that we will share in a bit)
that involved the students encountering new words
in their reading, exploring their meaning in multiple
texts and media, honing their knowledge through
research, and using the words in problem solving and
presentational talk and writing.
Josie also chose some generative word part for
FOCUS that she could teach in relational sets of word
families:
• the port family—export, import, transport, portable,
and so on
• the struct family—construct, destructive,
construction, and so on
She used the text project
Word Zones of 4000
frequent families as a
resource when selecting
generative words.
What did Josie do
about all those other
words? Some, like weight
and ancient, she knew
were familiar to her
students. Others would
be included in her word
FLOOD strategies—
constructing visible word
charts, mapping and
charting, puzzles, and
other means for exposing
students to a wide range
of words that so that they
could build relational
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sets and personal word books. This is also one place
where student choice and differentiation came in.
Students chose FLOOD words for personal study
beyond the “everybody” FOCUS words and included
these in their personal word books. Self-selection
allows your students with more prior knowledge to
stretch their knowledge, but it also allows students
who are just building a basic vocabulary to choose the
words that are right for them.
Josie also included the word kerfuffle
(unnecessary noise and activity) because she knew
that her students would find it a funny word and
would enjoy making a semantic map or schematic
(See Figure 6) of related terms. She knew too that
using these maps or schematics (“Let’s stop the
kerfuffle in our classroom so we can concentrate.”)
would stimulate students’ consciousness of words as
well and strengthen the relational sets so necessary
for incidental word learning. You can have as many
FLOOD words as you want in a class to enrich
the environment, but these are not assigned to all
or tested in traditional ways. Rather, they form a
backdrop of topically related terms for incidental
learning.
With her FLOOD words taken care of, Josie
moved on to planning FOCUS and FAST instruction
for her unit that would integrate with the teaching
Figure 6
Semantic map and schematic words related to kerfuffle
Draw your visual image for kerfuffle here
clamor
kerfuffle
brouhaha
commotion
ruckus
disruption
disorder
vocabulary learning as part of text comprehension,
not as some separate area of study.
Character Trait Analysis (CTA; Manyak, 2007) is a
rich and engaging process that focuses on vocabulary
that describes personal character traits. Manyak’s
research generated graded lists of vocabulary that
can be used along with teacher-selected vocabulary
to identify and track the development of characters
in fiction, biographies, news reports, and the like.
Students are engaged in read-alouds with the teacher
or personal reading and discuss, as a group, whether
characters or biographical figures or news subjects
display the trait being presented and are asked for
evidence from the text to support their view, an
emphasis of research based instruction as well as of
the CCSS (NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010).
Josie engaged her students in a CTA semantic
feature analysis charting the personal characteristics
of the emperor, the landlords, the porters, the
ambassador, and the shogun who each played a role in
their unit of study (See Figure 7). Her first question,
Was this person important to commerce and trade?
started the ball rolling with students finding evidence
in the text to support the notion that all persons were
important in their own way:
of her big ideas. She sorted out the words that she
wanted students to be responsible for using their
contextual, word part, and reference strategies, with
her scaffolding when needed, and organized her
planning sheet. Let’s take a closer look at examples
of instruction that reflect the four essential MCVIP
components and how this instruction might look in
the classroom.
Providing Students With Rich and
Varied Language Experiences
Students need to be immersed in a language-rich
environment to build oral vocabulary (Hart &
Risley, 1995). They learn words incidentally by
reading independently (Cunningham, 2005; Kim
& White, 2008), by listening to texts read aloud,
and through exposure to enriched oral language
and by participating in conversation and discussion
(Johnston, 2004). Students also learn words in the
texts of increasing complexity that they read in school
(Cervetti, Jaynes, & Hiebert, 2009). So the integrated
vocabulary classroom needs to do the following:
• Include read-alouds from engaging texts that stretch
the listeners
• Provide time and support for meaningful student
discussion and writing
• “The emperor directed the opening of the Silk Road
for trade across Asia.”
• Ensure time and support for regular personal, selfselected reading
Character Trait
Analysis
Along with these
environmental
characteristics,
instructional strategies
that require the use
of conversational,
problem solving,
and presentational
language, in both
speaking and writing,
are also essential and
necessary to develop
FOCUS vocabulary.
Integrated strategies
engage students in
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Figure 7
Semantic feature analysis on China unit vocabulary
authoritarian important to
commerce
emperor
X
landlord
X
shogun
X
porter
X
ambassador
X
ruled the
provinces
fought bravely fomented
rebellion
• “Porters undertook backbreaking labor carrying
goods on long treks along the trade highways.”
His students were reading selchie books such as
Greyling by Jane Yolen (1991) and The Seal Mother
by Mordicai Gerstein (1986). He applied Vocabulary
When disagreements could not be settled by the text,
Framing (Blachowicz, Bates, & Cieply, 2012), which
students consulted references to find out that both
is a pre-, during- and post-reading process using a
emperors and shoguns were authoritarian rulers.
graphic to focus and record students’ thinking.
In addition, second-grade teachers at Washington
The Vocabulary Framing process, called AEIOU,
School in Evanston, Illinois, had students track
Activates and Engages students with the vocabulary
character traits across a number of books they were
before reading, has them use the frame during
reading in Spanish and in English (See Figure 8).
reading to focus Inquiry about the words to gather
Students from four classrooms, both Spanish–English
evidence to their meanings and to Organize their
two-way immersion and general studies, read and
thinking, and calls on them to Use their notes for
shared the same books, and each classroom registered
discussion and writing after reading. As in the
their analysis on a hall chart.
emphasis of the CCSS, words are not pretaught but
Students had to support their classifications with
rather highlighted to activate knowledge or to be
examples from the texts before the class would vote
presented as a question for the students to work
on how to place their checkmark. Fourth- and fifththrough in reading.
grade students from MCVIP classrooms visited the
In this case, the frame Dan used was a Vocabsecond graders and questioned the students and
o-gram (Blachowicz, 1986), which is based on the
listened as they read selections from the text that
structure of narratives. He displayed the following
supported their views. CTA is a productive process
words on the smartboard: Greyling, shallows, wail,
for working through a whole text or unit and both
slough off, sandbar, fisherman, selchie, joyously, grief,
stimulates and supports student use of rich language.
roiling seas, baby, and kin. Dan asked the students to
work as a group to predict how these words might be
Vocabulary Framing
used in the story as well as identifying those words
In a language arts class, Dan, a fifth-grade teacher,
that were mystery words. Students used the Vocabwas working on a genre unit of magical realism.
o-gram frame to organize their prereading thinking
(See Figure 9).
Dan then asked students to each
Figure 8
write a question stimulated by their
Character Trait Analysis in Spanish and English
Vocab-o-gram exploration. Some
examples were Who gets stranded?
What’s a selchie? Who or what is a
greyling (a boat, a fish)? Why are there
happy and sad words? And the all-time
fifth-grade girl question, What happens
to the baby? Baby, a word that all
students knew that the teacher placed in
the list to pique their interest.
Each student was assigned one or
two words to locate in the reading,
determine the meaning of, be ready to
present to the group, and to read from
the explanatory context or elaborate
with a reference, during the post-reading
discussion. Students could also select
other words they encountered that they
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Figure 9
Vocab-o-gram frame on Greyling
(Yolen, 1991)
• Making a personal connection with student use
• Participating in some semantic decision task
• Employing meaningful use
It’s also essential that the students encounter the word
in print, discussion, reading, research, inquiry, and
writing.
Let’s see what this FAST instruction might look
like if the teacher wanted to teach the meaning of
buffet (meaning “a strong hit”). First, the word is
placed on the board. Then the teacher leads the
students through the steps by saying the following:
1. Let’s say it. It’s not “boo-fay,” it’s “buff-it.”(see/say)
2. H
ere’s an example. When there is a windstorm, the
tree branches buffet my roof and knock off shingles.
(context)
wanted to add to the vocab-o-gram and enter into
their personal word book.
After reading and the comprehension discussion
following the selection, Dan asked the students to
edit their vocab-o-grams in another color pencil
to reflect their current thinking. They had refined
their knowledge of wail, built knowledge of slough
off, and confirmed knowledge of the other words.
Dan decided that no further work with the words
was necessary and, as an extension activity, had
students use their vocab-o-grams as keys to write
a summary of the book. Frames are excellent for
use with cooperative groups because the sum of the
group’s knowledge is always greater than individual
knowledge.
3. W
hat could it mean? (The teacher elicits, gives,
or restates a meaning: It means “to hit with a lot
of force.”) Let’s check. (The teacher gives or finds
definition to confirm; optional, if time allows.)
Teaching Specific Vocabulary
These steps are negotiable and can be organized
depending on what the students already know
but will help establish a basic routine for teaching
individual words. Students can also learn this routine
and be the “expert,” directing the class lesson for their
individual words.
We have already shared examples of FAST instruction,
which is teaching words as they are encountered or
at different places in the instructional cycle. This can
be done in real time as the words are encountered
in a presentational mode. There are many ways to
approach this instruction, but elements that are
important include the following:
• Seeing and saying the word, as pronunciation can
call up oral vocabulary
• Hearing the word in context
• Getting a definition, either teacher given or student
supplied
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4. T
urn and talk with your partner and use buffet
in a sentence about something you remember or
imagine. Share out and give feedback on usage.
5. L
et me ask you a question. Would your teacher
want you to buffet others in the classroom? Why or
why not?
6. Record buffet in your word book or sheet and add
a synonym or short definition and a picture that
helps you remember the meaning. (Teacher can use
this as meaningful seatwork or homework.)
Developing Students’ Independent
Word Learning Strategies
When stuck on a new word, students can use
external context and internal context (word parts) to
help. The building of declarative knowledge about
types of context is one of the most developed parts
of traditional word study curricula, and we won’t
Figure 10
The vocabulary rule
THE VOCABULARY RULE
When you come to a word, and you don’t know what it means:
1. Try to read it out loud to make sure you don't know it.
2. Look for CONTEXT CLUES. Read the sentences around the word to see if there are hints to its
meaning.
3. Look for WORD-PART CLUES. See if you can break the word into a root word and prefixes and
suffixes to help figure out its meaning. Look also for word parts like vis or vid (“to see”) to help you decide
what it means.
4. Think of a WORD IN SPANISH or another language that looks like or sounds like the English word.
(In schools with diverse languages)
5. Try ANOTHER STRATEGY like reading on, asking someone, or using a dictionary or thesaurus.
orientation is useful, engaging students in both
duplicate it here. What is important is including
composing and decomposing words. Josie had her
procedural learning. Baumann and colleagues (2007)
students build a word ladder for the port family (See
formulated “The Vocabulary Rule” (See Figure 10),
Figure 11). MCVIP teachers also keep a chart of
which stresses the need for students to learn to use
roots and affixes across the year to make the growth
context and word part in a process-oriented way.
of their knowledge visible to their students (See
Process lessons for context clues would include
Figure 12).
teaching the major types of context clues (i.e.,
Josie also used Elkonin-like boxes or chips to
definition, synonym, antonym, example, apposition,
help students identify the meaningful parts of a
global context) and then giving students plenty
word. When students tried to analyze the word
of practice in real contexts. Ask students to locate
the unknown word and look
around (before or after) the
word for the types of clues
Figure 11
presented. Students can also
Word ladder for the port family
look within the word (internal
context) for word parts that
Origin: Latin port = to carry
help them understand the
seaport = place where goods are carried out and in
word. What is important is that
transport = carry across
porter = someone who carries
students find the evidence for
portage = carrying canoe or good over land between water
their conclusion about the word
portable = able to be carried
and then end up by asking,
deport = carry/send away
export = carry/send out
Does this make sense?
import= carry/send in
For learning to use
word part, a similar process
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Figure 12
Affix chart
been defined in many ways
(Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2002).
Some examples follow:
• Interest in words; awareness
of how words work (e.g.,
figurative language)
• Enjoyment of words and word
play
• Appreciation of the nuance
of word choice authors and
speakers make
• Recognition of different
domains and registers for
vocabulary (e.g., playground
words versus school words,
science writing vocabulary
versus theater writing
vocabulary)
• The ability to use words well
and for one’s own purpose in
both speech and writing
profitable, they divided the word into syllables pro/fit/
able, which had them focus on the pro- as a syllable
meaning for or supporting. Josie placed these boxes on
the board, which led them to:
profit
able
This focused the students on the two meaningful
parts of the word and reminded students that they
needed to look for meaningful roots first when
analyzing internal context. Another important
learning is that not all words are well explained in
context. Some contexts are actually misdirective, and
then references can be used to help.
Stimulating and Developing Word
Consciousness
Several studies conducted by Scott and colleagues
have documented the impact of word consciousness
instruction and environments on students’ affective
and cognitive growth in vocabulary (Scott, Vevea, &
Flinspach, 2010). The term word consciousness has
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We already presented
ideas on flooding the classroom with words. In the
following sections, we want to comment on three
things (besides a welcoming and playful environment
and volume of reading and writing) that MCVIP
teachers reported as being critical to their success in
building word consciousness for their students.
Keeping Words Visible
Teachers noted that having words under study be
visible made a big difference in their students’ word
consciousness: Students could consult the charts when
reading or writing. Requests for spelling assistance
declined drastically, and students had visible
documentation of their own expanding vocabularies.
Some classes kept the word list growing in lines
around the classroom. Other classes had portable
charts made on chart paper and stored in rolls on
shelves, organized by topics and domains with the
labels visible. Still other classes kept computer lists
that could be called up to the classroom computer or
smartboard at will. By spring, each classroom had a
chart dictionary of their content words for the year
and a visible record of their learning.
Sharing the Richness of Words
Beyond synonyms, antonyms, connotations, and
denotations, there is a wealth of knowledge about
words and their usage that students can come
to understand, appreciate, and use. Figurative
language is a rich area for study (See Figure 13). For
some of our teachers, themselves English learners,
digging into this fund of knowledge was a journey
of personal learning as well. Every quarter, two or
three word relationships or figurative word types
were examined through teacher presentation or
student creation, usually with drawing, drama,
or music involved. Students were encouraged to
use these in their own writing. Dictionaries of
idioms were purchased for each classroom to help
with those many English usages that befuddle less
sophisticated language learners. One teacher also
collected figurative sayings from different cultures, a
favorite being the Spanish saying, “She puts too much
sour cream on her taco,” a statement describing an
overdressed, overjeweled, or overly made-up female.
Each student’s personal word book contained
a commonplace book section, which is a writer’s
collection of quotations, words, and ideas he or she
comes across in reading in language arts and content
areas. Students selected examples of interesting
writing from their reading and shared them with the
class, part of the process Scott and her colleagues
(2010) so beautifully named “a gift of words.”
Engaging Weekly Review
Having a word wall and using a word wall are two
different things (Harmon, Wood, Hedrick, Vintinner,
& Willeford, 2009). MCVIP teachers were required
to review 10–14 word wall words a week as everybody
words for which all students were responsible. Though
there was some grumbling at the start, the teachers
noted in their final evaluations that having this ritual
was one that was important for both their and their
Figure 13
Word splash on types of figurative language
students, developing word consciousness. Many used
some form of Word Wizard (Beck & McKeown, 1983),
with or without point systems, for students to report
instances of seeing or hearing the focus words for the
week. To review the words, teachers drew from a set of
quick and playful review activities, such as “Be a Mind
Reader,” “Connect Two” (Blachowicz, 1986), “Hot
Seat” and others (see Sidebar for online resources that
provide step-by-step processes for these activities).
Student behaviors provided signs that word
consciousness was flowering in the classrooms. More
than once, teachers reported that students reminded
them that Friday was waning and they had yet to
do their review and game. One teacher, on being
reminded, turned around to find the weekly chart
and, when she turned back, students were quietly
lined up with their word sticky notes in hand, ready
to talk about their words they had seen that week.
Students became so attuned to the words that
they often blurted out, “That’s one of our words”
when they came across them during class or even
on standardized tests. To keep up attention but to
minimize interruptions, students were asked to use
Online Resources for Review Activities
• Be a Mind Reader: www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/04/lp328-03.shtml
• Connect Two: www.weac.org/news_and_publications/education_news/2006-2007/readingroomfeb07.aspx
• Hot Seat: www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/04/lp328-04.shtml
12
Figure 14
Halloween walk with vocabulary
something new without learning new vocabulary. I think we
should call it “Vocabulary 24/7.”
A teacher summarized what we hope you might
feel after trying some of our suggestions:
My principal observed me for a whole morning and was
very positive about my instruction. She told me that I was
attending to vocabulary the entire time and showed me her
notes. I did fast teaching, I did focused teaching, and my
classroom floods my students with words. I was actually
kind of surprised by this and felt “Wow, I really get this
now!” It has become second nature to me.
Note
The preparation of this article was supported in part by the Institute
of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through
Grant R305A090163 to the University of Missouri-Columbia,
University of Wyoming, and National-Louis University and also by
a grant from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust
to National-Louis University and from our teacher and school
partners. The opinions expressed are those of the authors alone.
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the V (for vocabulary) hand sign whenever a new
word was noticed. In one school, the students decided
that their Halloween costumes should be augmented
with vocabulary words (See Figure 14).
Some Final Words
This is an exciting time to be interested in vocabulary
instruction. We know so much more about what
makes a good program and how to make those
teacher decisions that integrate vocabulary instruction
into the curriculum. As part of our exit process for
the MCVIP project, we interviewed both teachers
and students to find out what they thought is an
enduring understanding they took away from their
participation. We will leave with their final words
as you embark upon this experimentation in your
classroom.
One student offered us a new metaphor for our
approach:
I used to think vocabulary was just what we did in our old
workbook. Now I see it’s just everywhere! You can’t learn
13
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CAMILLE L.Z. BLACHOWICZ is professor emeritus and
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College of Education of National-Louis University, Chicago,
Illinois. She can be reached at [email protected].
PATRICK C. MANYAK is an associate professor in the
Early & Elementary Childhood Education department at the
University of Wyoming in Laramie. He can be reached at
[email protected].
JAMES F. BAUMANN is Chancellor’s Chair for Excellence
in Literacy Education at University of Missouri-Columbia. He
can be reached at [email protected].
MICHAEL F. GRAVES is a professor emeritus at the
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He can be reached at
[email protected].
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JEANNE PARATORE (Boston University,
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KAREN WOOD (University of North Carolina,
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BRIAN KISSEL (University of North Carolina,
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RACHEL MCCORMACK (Roger Williams University,
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“Flood, Fast, Focus” Integrated Vocabulary

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